Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Never think that a small voice floating in the ether can't be heard. It can when we join together. In honour of National Infertility Awareness Week (NIAW), running with Flicka's original idea, and in the spirit of community--a surge of blogtavism.

On Thursday, November 8th, Flicka and I are pulling together a project we are calling Twelve and a Half Fighting Back. The twelve-and-a-half are the 12.5% of the population experiencing infertility and recurrent pregnancy loss. This project's purpose is two-fold. It is a push for a letter-writing campaign during an election year and it is an amalgamation of stories, putting a very human touch to an experience that is often held at arm's length by politicians and the general public.

For the letter writing campaign, click here to read more on Flicka's blog and see how you can participate.

For the My Story project, create and post a four paragraph description of your own experience with infertility/pregnancy loss/adoption highlighting either what having insurance coverage or adoption benefits allowed you to do or how your story could have been different with mandated coverage. Make sure your own voice comes through--this isn't a mere recitation of facts: it is your experience and your emotions. Talk as if you do have your congressperson's ear for a moment: what would you want them to know about your experience? Shorter is better--try to keep your story down to 4 paragraphs. Post any time between now and November 8th (I will continue to add links to stories after November 8th, but this list is going up then and your story will have maximum exposure if you post by then).

I will be keeping a list of participants and adding permalinks to the main post (whenever you post, send me the link to the post as well as your blog name and the name you'd like to have appear next to the story). We are trying to bank on the attention right now coming from the Weblog Awards, but even if I don't win, we're working to get this list of stories and letter writing campaign into the newspaper and Internet coverage. We will get our words out there into the general population's consciousness.

Anyone in the infertility/pregnancy loss/adoption community (in other words, all 1000 blogs on the blogroll as well as all the ones I haven't found yet) can be a blogtavist on this project. Use your sliver of the Internet to bring attention to the issues affecting us right now--especially the ones senators and congressmen can address and affect while in office. If you plan on participating, please leave a note below or simply email me (thetowncriers@gmail.com) the link whenever you post.

23 comments:

I'm in - our state (AZ) has no mandated coverage for infertility at all. Which means unless we get really lucky or win the lottery, our family cannot grow. I hope this will do some good to those in similar positions as us.

Hi!Here is a link to my "My Story" post:http://bonnie-ourjourney.blogspot.com/2007/11/my-story.htmlMy blog site is:http://www.bonnie-ourjourney.blogspot.comTitle of blog: Our JourneyMy name: BonnieThis is such a neat idea. I hope my post works with what you wanted. Just let me know if you need any changes made and I'd be happy to do so.

I'll write a letter to my Canadian politicians! And maybe make a nice list of who to write to etc. for everyone else.

Just remind everybody to name their congressmen, and Senator specifically with their full names, no misspellings. These guys have google alerts set up on their names, and so do their critics and opponents.

They should send letters to the one holding office and whoever is running against them in the next election. And then cc. those letters or blog posts to the local media.

Write letters in your real names, but don't be afraid to blog it as well. Public and private both matter!

This is an awesome awareness campaign and as I have only just begun to stumble through the maze of the infertility tested, tried and stressed I find this a great asset. Thank you so much for the time and dedication ya'll are putting into this!I blog about my infertility stresses at http://deardarla.typepad.com . I know I'm luckier than many and have the government's health care to start the testing but that well will run dry once we start heading past the clomid stages and into bigger drugs, invitro ... etc. Keep up the good work!

If you want to figure out how to navigate this site, please click here. There's a lot to process on the sidebars alone and this should help you from getting lost. If you want to know about my header and the image, click here.

She doesn't really know why she is writing about herself in third person, but you can read a lot more about her right here.

What is Stirrup Queens? It's a blog about infertility and pregnancy loss, an exploration of adoption and donor gametes, a bitch session about daily life and books, an outlet for stories and baking lessons written by a sustainable-living, kosher, Jewish, mother of twins conceived via fertility treatments who is still trying to add to her family.

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The list features a post from every participating member of the adoption/loss/infertility (ALI) blogosphere. Everyone is welcome and encouraged to participate. The list is open the entire year and is added to on a daily basis for several months. If you would like to participate, please click here and read the instructions to send in your submission.